Bob's caboose build

[Gold5one]

You need to disguise your tiny house as something else-- one of these on the front and side with your phone number will do the trick-
You do have an old mower to park in front, right?

[bobhenry]

Hide in plain sight as a billboard...... BRILLIANT !

[aggie79]

Except that signs are probably more regulated than structures.

[godskid]

Rather than hiding as a billboard, he may have meant hiding in plain sight as the tool shed ostensibly storing JimBob's lawn gear for the aforementioned potentially fake business. Or possibly not so fake business, if you need a side career!

[bobhenry]

After the $583.00 installation fee for the electrical drop, I just spent $753 on materials for the service. Luckily my main guy helping me with the install will probably only cost me $300.00 - This electrical adventure is almost more than my build cost


Well the pole is up ,the meter base and disconnect is in, The panel is in the tractor barn, and with a little luck I will be ready for final inspection by Friday.

[pchast]

I would question your local utility on the material costs. Our utility would
rebate part of the cost of underground wire for a new service. When we
put in ours it was more than half the cost of the wire... I wonder if its
still available?

[bobhenry]

Last night I was kidnapped and left to wander while the gal pal got a quick trim. I took a walk down the alley and tripped over about 110 feet of 12-2 with ground that had been gutted from a room partition in a big commercial building and tossed into the dumpster. Well since I am wiring the tractor barn for the caboose tiny house to plug into I decided it was a good find and loaded it into the truck.


Several weeks ago I saw a swing set "A" frame in a pile of scrap steel. I stopped and offered the fellow $5.00 for it and he even help me load it. Well it gets better!

Yesterday I was driving across town and there was a big pile of absolutely free junk in a front yard. In that pile was a porch swing with all the chains and ready to hang. I now have a nice swing and frame in the yard of the caboose house.

[Padilen]

Good finds. I thought the "tripped over"was going to end with a hospital visit.
Be Careful about picking up scrap metal especially in an alley. Your find could be someone's stolen stash.

[Gold5one]

That house romex is a good find! I found a medium size dorm refrigerator last year on the curb on trash day- brought it home, wired on a new plug and it works perfectly. You never know what treasure is out there. . When I was working at the BMV office the winter of 2010, a young man had me read the vin number on a dusty old motorcycle he bought at moving sale for $50- he took a chance- a court ordered title was going to cost him $200. I asked him , do you know what you bought? "no", It's a Kawasaki Mach III that does 0-60 in 5 seconds and a 13 sec 1/4 mile of about 100mph, I know because I owned one in the 70's. "what's it worth?"-- around $5000, when you get it cleaned up and running-- was he a happy guy.

[bobhenry]

Well the electric is in !

Took about 3 1/2 hours to get the underground cables in and hooked up. Of course there was the ONE MORE TRIP to pick up breakers. The ones I had didn't fit the new break box.

I am waiting for the boys in the big white truck to hot me up and stab in the meter.

BUT I am done !

On to building slider doors for the tractor barn and batten down the rubber roof on the caboose.

I know ..... I would have had the roof done but it's cold enough now I need a heat gun and that takes electricity.

I used every stitch of my found electric wire and only had to buy 25 feet too completely wire the barn. Yes I am the king of cheap !

UPDATE THE LIGHTS ARE ON AS OF 4:20 LAST NIGHT !

[rebapuck]

LET THERE BE LIGHT!!!

[bobhenry]

Well things have a way of finding me...

Went to my favorite store...... (Goodwill) and found these

http://www.build.com/wac-lighting-hr-le ... 6248_13_v3

$1.99 each so I bought a dozen

[Nansplace]

Once again, you're the King of bargains!!!!! I've never known anyone that can find things the way you do. It's like what you need, just falls in your lap Great find!!!

[bobhenry]

Well an interesting weekend. The weather was great ( for November here ) I purchased all the 1/2 black pipe to run the gas lines in the caboose but never got farther than unloading the pieces and parts. Got busy building doors for the tractor barn .....



Spent most of Saturday chasing barn door track. If anyone is interested none of the big box lumber stores carry barn door track

One aggravation after another all day I was beginning to feel Friday the 13th spilled over to Saturday.

The final straw was getting back to the barn I decided to use my circuit tester to check the wiring as I had had two light bulbs blow upon installation ?????

I had all kind of real crazy combinations of light codes on the tester. Some of which were not even on the code diagram. I called my electrician buddy that had tutored me thru the service installation and he scheduled to check out the problem early Sunday morning.

Before I tell you what we found , in his defense he is 71 and has been an electricial 40+ years of his adult life. On the day we installed the service he had just climbed to the top of a 30 foot meter pole to install the weather head then we worked four very busy hours.

Fast forward to Sunday He opened the box and started laughing. I took offence he was laughing at my attempt at wiring the breaker box and he quickly said NO and pointed to a connection he had made earlier in the week. Seems we were not paying attention and had put the hot wire on the neutral and the neutral on the hot lug.
This means that 120 volts were being delivered to each side of the outlets and the ground was being used as a default neutral. 240 volts to a light bulb makes for a real short life span. We corrected our error and all is well. I learned a breaker box collects 2 phases of electric and each side work on a separate hot leg. I got dumb lucky once again. This error only affected one side of the building. Luckily the caboose was connected by a huge extension cord to the good side. Had it not been connected this way the 8 transformers for the led lighting and the AM FM CD player and the fridge and freezer would have been toast.

Thank you big guy !

[bobhenry]

Well winter has arrived



I had a buddy lined up to help me with the barn doors and then winter arrived.